The Magnetic North eBook

CHAPTER VI

A PENITENTIAL JOURNEY

“... Certain London parishes
still receive L12 per annum
for fagots to burn heretics.”—­JOHN
RICHARD GREEN.

The Boy slept that night in the Kachime beside a very
moody, restless host. Yagorsha dispensed with
the formality of going to bed, and seemed bent on
doing what he could to keep other people awake.
He sat monologuing under the seal lamp till the Boy
longed to throw the dish of smouldering oil at his
head. But strangely enough, when, through sheer
fatigue, his voice failed and his chin fell on his
broad chest, a lad of fourteen or so, who had also
had difficulty to keep awake, would jog Yagorsha’s
arm, repeating interrogatively the last phrase used,
whereon the old Story-Teller would rouse himself and
begin afresh, with an iteration of the previous statement.
If the lad failed to keep him going, one or other
of the natives would stir uneasily, lift a head from
under his deerskin, and remonstrate. Yagorsha,
opening his eyes with a guilty start, would go on
with the yarn. When morning came, and the others
waked, Yagorsha and the lad slept.

Nicholas and all the rest who shared the bench at
night, and the fire in the morning, seemed desperately
depressed and glum. A heavy cloud hung over Pymeut,
for Pymeut was in disgrace.

About sunset the women came in with the kantaks and
the lard-cans. Yagorsha sat up and rubbed his
eyes. He listened eagerly, while the others questioned
the women. The old Chief wasn’t dead at
all. No, he was much better. Brother Paul
had been about to all the house-bound sick people,
and given everybody medicine, and flour, and a terrible
scolding. Oh yes, he was angrier than anybody
had ever been before. Some natives from the school
at Holy Cross were coming for him tomorrow, and they
were all going down river and across the southern
portage to the branch mission at Kuskoquim.

“Down river? Sure?”

Yes, sure. Brother Paul had not waited to come
with those others, being so anxious to bring medicine
and things to Ol’ Chief quick; and this was
how he was welcomed back to the scene of his labours.
A Devil’s Dance was going on! That was
what he called it.

I’ll have company back to camp, was the Boy’s
first thought, and then—­would there be
any fun in that after all? It was plain Brother
Paul was no such genial companion as Father Wills.

And so it was that he did not desert Nicholas, although
Brother Paul’s companions failed to put in an
appearance on the following morning. However,
on the third day after the incident of the Shaman (who
seemed to have vanished into thin air), Brother Paul
shook the snow of Pymeut from his feet, and with three
Indians from the Holy Cross school and a dog-team,
he disappeared from the scene. Not till he had
been gone some time did Nicholas venture to return
to the parental roof.